Field of the Invention
The invention relates to validation of distributed transactions, and more particularly, to techniques for detecting cheating in an on-line gaming environment.
Description of the Related Art
The popularity of gambling on the Internet has soared in recent years. Worldwide online gambling was responsible for an estimated two billion dollars of revenue in 1998 and projected 2001 revenues total over seven billion. Traditional gambling is heavily regulated to protect the individual gambler from fraud by casinos. Similar regulations do not yet exist to protect online gamblers. Indeed, significant technical challenges exist to ensuring fair outcomes in which the absence of cheating by the casino (or by players) can be verified. Cheating is a concern for the casinos, as well as for the players. In fact, because of a fear of cheating, existing online casinos often restrict wagering to table games. In general, table games are games where all player information is revealed and only the house has hidden information. The players compete only against the casino, and not against each other. These table games include blackjack, roulette, craps, and Caribbean stud. In contrast, for other games such as poker where players control hidden information, it generally not possible to prevent players from opening another communication channel with which to collude during the course of a game. The colluding players can gain information about the game that would change its outcome, thus cheating. Table games, on the other hand, make player-to-player collusion irrelevant. Players cannot gain information via collusion, because they control no secret information.
A need exists for systems, methods and techniques through which both online gamblers and online casinos can be ensured a “safe”, credible area to gamble online. If developed, such systems, methods and techniques could be employed in a wide variety of gaming, entertainment and other applications in which random selections from a predefined set of outcomes play a role.